


You put your arms around me and I'm home

by MuddlingAlong



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: F/F, Fluff, a bit of angst, some nice affirmations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 00:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14580666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuddlingAlong/pseuds/MuddlingAlong
Summary: Missing scenes between 7th and 8th of MayCharity comes to find Vanessa after the police come to visit, and Vanessa tells her some things she needs to hear





	You put your arms around me and I'm home

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Arms' by Christina Perri which BY THE WAY is a Vanity song, just imagine it from Charity to Vanessa and it'll break you heart
> 
> Mentions of Bails, but focus is v much on Charity and Vanessa
> 
> If you fancy leaving some feedback, it keeps me going!!!

Her ears, which since bringing Johnny home have been tuned to the tiniest break in the silence of the night, prick up at the sound of the lock clicking and the soft snap as the front door closes.

 

She smiles almost sadly and sits up in bed, sleep fading away quickly as she turns on the bedside lamp, as if she hadn’t been dreaming a minute ago. Vanessa hadn’t been expecting her girlfriend to come over this evening. The last three nights had been spent alone, restless, anxiously waiting on a text or call that never came. She was trying to be more subtle in her approach to the Bails situation, having learned last week, almost too late, that Charity responded to irritation and not-so-subtle hinting with even more irritation and eventual anger, or worse, distant silence. But today despite her confession, the police, Charity’s dismissive attitude and hurried excuses to leave have all lead to Vanessa’s resigning to spend another quiet evening with Johnny and Tracy, trying to conceal her disappointment and the growing, gnawing fear that Charity was slipping away from her. 

 

So upon hearing the rustle of coats and shoes below, and those familiar padded footsteps up the stairs, Vanessa lets out a breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding for days, and silently congratulates her past self for having given her a key a few weeks ago, so that Charity could come to this decision on her own.

 

The bedroom door creaks slowly, and Vanessa’s heart glows knowing that Charity is trying not to disturb her or her son. Their eyes meet across the dimly lit room and Vanessa cocks her head to the side, trying to put as much care and honesty into her small smile as possible.

 

“Hey,” she whispers softly as Charity closes the door behind her, wincing slightly at the soft click.

 

“Hi,” Charity’s voice is tired and heavy, and as she comes closer Vanessa can see the darkness of the bags under her eyes against the unusual paleness of her skin, “sorry, I know it’s late, Chas asked me to close up.” 

 

She pulls her jumper over her head, revealing an old t shirt that she often sleeps in, and sits on the edge of the bed next to Vanessa. “It’s ok, I was awake anyway,” Vanessa lies, shifting closer to kiss her once, gently, on the mouth.

 

Charity pulls away and looks at her straight, her piercing green eyes flickering with emotion in the faint light, and sighs softly. “No, you weren’t. I’m sorry, I woke you up.” Her voice has a finality to it, and guilt and apology are written all over her face like scars.

 

Vanessa is taken aback for the hundredth time by how useless it is to try and lie to Charity, and how, when she is fixed with that gaze, honesty becomes the only option. “Yeah, alright. But I don’t mind, honestly, Charity.” She brings a hand up to cup her face gently, not wanting to overwhelm her with emotion and is relieved and somehow devastated when Charity leans into her touch. Her thumb brushes away imaginary tears as she says, “I missed you.”

 

Closing her eyes as if against a world of pain, Charity holds Vanessa’s palm against her cheek with her own hand. Vanessa knows, knows as if she can feel the vibrations of it through the soft skin of her face, that although her girlfriend looks steady and calm on the outside, a thousand thoughts are chasing each other round her brain with a sickening, unrelenting intensity. She also knows that no amount of coaxing or even badgering is going to get her much new information tonight, not when Charity’s like this.

 

So she slips out of bed and encourages her out of her jeans, folding them neatly and placing them on the chair where her jumper had been thrown. Returning to the bed, she sees that Charity has already slid between the sheets, shifted over to the other side of the bed and is holding the duvet up so that Vanessa can crawl in to join her.

 

Ignoring the coolness at Charity’s fingertips and toes, although internally knowing that to be that cold, even at one o’clock on a May morning, she’d have had to have stood outside for a good while debating whether or not to come in, Vanessa pulls her close, legs slid between each another, chest to chest, nose to nose. She knows that Charity doesn’t ask for help, doesn’t volunteer her vulnerability, doesn’t offer up her flank to be shot at. So she knows what it must have taken to gather up the strength to come here, all unshed tears and tension. And she’s not about to throw that back in her face.

 

She winds her arms round Charity’s waist, one lower down, pressing them together with a solidity that she hopes Charity can feel safe in, the other rubbing slow circles underneath the fabric of the t shirt. Her eyes are closed, squeezed shut, and her muscles, she can feel against her own, are rigid and taut. “Ness,” she whispers, and her broken voice reminds her brutally of that day when Charity opened herself up and showed her those scars, harsh and unused to daylight and still so, so tender, “I can’t get him out of my head.”

 

Tears well up in Vanessa’s throat and she shifts upwards, tucking Charity’s head beneath her chin and pulling her closer, pressing her lips into her hair, drinking in the familiar smell of her shampoo. “I know, baby,” she hums, rocking their entwined bodies back and forth ever so slightly, “but you will, I promise you.”

 

Charity buries her face deep into Vanessa’s chest, and she begins to feel what she suspects are tears through the fabric of her vest top. She knows there’s nothing she can do now but hold her. Despite desperately wanting to know the details of her following Bails, despite having questions and concerns about the past three days, despite being incredibly fearful for the conference tomorrow and what she suspects she might do, Vanessa lets Charity weep softly into her body, her fist clenched in the dampening material, and murmurs what she hopes are comforting words into her girlfriend’s hair. Talking can wait until tomorrow.

 

She doesn’t know how long they lie like that for, but eventually Charity’s grip on her top relaxes, and Vanessa feels her muscles begin to loosen. She continues rocking them gently, even after she hears the familiar, rhythmic sounds of sleepy breathing coming from below her chin. To have fallen asleep that quickly, Charity must have been exhausted, and Vanessa doesn’t want to think about how much she’s been sleeping recently. She presses her lips once more into the top of her head, lingering for a second, eyes closed, to whisper her love into the blonde curls, and then relaxes herself.

 

Part of her is terrified. Charity keeps revealing vast new swathes of pain and hurt, and although Vanessa knows that she wants more than anything to help her through this, to hold her hand and listen to her when she knows no one else has, she fears for the morning, when her words might not be enough.

 

But part of her is relieved. That Charity came to her this evening instead of spending another night alone is a sign that maybe she doesn’t regret having opened up. The more Charity trusts her, the more she falls in love with her, an all-consuming, sweeping, uncontrollable feeling that has her spinning. She knows it’s love, now. She hasn’t said it yet, but it’s tingling at the tip of her tongue every time she bloody thinks about her. One of these days she’ll blurt it out at a customer at the vets _I am in love with Charity Dingle_ and the funny thing is, that thought doesn’t scare her like it used to.

 

She feels the hand that had been bunched in her shirt snake over her waist and settle, returning her pressure and pulling them closer.

 

Tomorrow will bring its own challenges, she knows. But as she drifts off, she sinks into the feeling of being wrapped round her love and knows also that she’s going to have a chance of making her smile.

 

She will follow Charity wherever she goes, chasing her with her love offered out in open hands.

 

She will follow her to the ends of the earth to make her feel the love she deserves to feel.

 

 

———

 

 

Charity wakes slowly, drifting to consciousness like being swept gently to shore. 

 

She feels Vanessa before she sees her, feels her pressed up against her back, having shifted during the night. She keeps her eyes closed, wanting to stay in this moment for as long possible, let the warmth of arms round her waist seep into her veins, let the rhythm of the breath against her back steady her own. The last few nights had felt empty without Vanessa, she’d felt like she couldn’t get warm, no matter how many blankets she had, no matter how closely she hugged herself. But this, this comfort, being in Vanessa’s arms, this is what she had been crying out for.

 

But the inevitable heavy wave of reality rolls over her and she remembers why they’d spent the last few nights apart and her muscles fill up with tension and bile. Feeling sick with the memory of it, Charity shudders involuntarily, and Vanessa stirs with the movement.

 

“Wassat?” She grumbles, voice croaky, full of sleep.

 

Charity winces, she hadn’t meant to wake her up. “Sorry, babe,” she says, and makes to move out of Vanessa’s embrace, but she’s pulled back gently, one hand slipped into her own. There’s no forcefulness about the gesture at all, and Charity, after taking a moment’s pause to decide, turns and falls back against the pillows, lets arms wrap around her again. 

 

Despite the churn of sickening feelings that hadn’t relented since that man had appeared in Tug Ghyll, she feels her jaw unclench as Vanessa trails tiny, wispy kisses along her hairline, feels her fists, balled tightly at her stomach, soften as warmer fingers stroke heat into the bones.

 

“You were talking in your sleep,” Vanessa hums into her ear, and there’s no reproach at all in her voice, no matter how hard Charity listens for it.

 

All the same, Charity’s stomach sinks, fearful as to what previously dormant horrors could have been dragged into the night by her unwary brain. “Oh? What was I saying?”

 

Vanessa is lively this morning, despite the apparent interruptions during the night, and she is liquid, warm and sweet and breathing into every darkened corner of Charity’s soul. “I couldn’t understand most of it,” she says lightly, “but at one point you grabbed my bum, so I’m hoping that I had a starring role.”

 

Charity’s body is rocked with a guilty, relieved laugh, which feels like it chases a few shadows away. “Whoops,” she says, and there is no apology in her voice whatsoever, “I guess I can’t help myself,” and she reaches down, echoing her touch from last night, massaging lazily.

 

“Can’t say I blame you,” Vanessa feigns cockiness and moves so she’s lying on top of Charity, resting her chin on interlinked fingers on her chest, legs either side of Charity’s. And maybe at another time she would have found the weight of someone else on top of her overwhelming and stifling, but somehow the weight of Vanessa against her makes her feel feather light. The glow of the dawn in Vanessa’s eyes keep her grounded to the present, to the here and now, encouraging her out of those dark holes she’s spent the last few days in.

 

Charity smiles with an eyebrow raised, not meeting her eyes and instead avidly watching her fingers winding through her girlfriend’s hair, playing with it like Moses plays with her own, avoiding a conversation she knows is hanging right in front of them

 

“Hey,” and of course Vanessa bloody knows what she’s trying to do, “look, you don’t have to say anything right now, you know that I’ll never make you talk about anything that you don’t want to talk about-”

 

“OK, good, because I know that you enjoy telling me all about the intricate details of the computer system at the vets and how you understand it a thousand times better than Pearl, but actually I’d rather not-” her terrible attempt at avoiding this conversation is cut off with a sardonic glare from Vanessa, and she falls quiet with a shadowy smile.

 

When Vanessa does speak, her voice is quiet and tender enough to make her want to cry. “Just, let me say something?” Charity nods once. “I know that you must feel absolutely awful with him hanging around, and I know that having those memories dragged up again feels like too much,” she kisses Charity long and soft on the chest, underneath her shirt, just above where her heartbeat is threatening to punch its way through her skin.

 

“And that maybe, maybe you feel small and crummy,” Charity’s eyes close at the use of her own words, amazed for the hundredth time that she actually pays attention to what she says, “and yesterday you said that he’d got away with it all,” Vanessa shifts slightly so she can gently brush soft curls away from Charity’s face, elbow anchored into the bed.

 

“But you are so, so wrong. Baby, you, you bit back,” Charity can feel tears well up behind her closed eyes and she rolls her head into Vanessa’s touch. “You are part owner of a very successful business, and you own a home, you put a roof over your two gorgeous sons’ heads, and you are a great mother-” Vanessa brings Charity’s head back up to look at her, adamant that she’s going to hear this “-a _great_ mother. You have a grown up, independent, intelligent daughter, and two grandchildren who you love to pieces,” Charity swallows her indignation at the g-word, “and you’d do anything for them, for any of them. You have friends and you have family, and you have me-” Vanessa interrupts herself by kissing her on the mouth, “-someone who- cares about you a lot and isn’t going anywhere any time soon.”

 

Charity feels the weight of the said and the unsaid and opens her eyes, surprised to see her tears mirrored in the blue, “despite everything that that _excuse_ for a man has done to you, despite all of the _shit_ that the world has thrown at you, you have built a life for yourself, a good life, a steady life, and you get up every day and you hug your children and you provide for them and you keep going.” Vanessa kisses her again, and Charity has to fight against the lump expanding in her throat to return it, impetuously, chin lifting to chase it when her lips carry on talking, “you are the strongest person I know. And I know that you can’t see it, but you are. You are amazing, wonderful, _beautiful_ , intelligent, fierce, kind,” in-between each word she presses a kiss to Charity’s chest, neck, jaw, shoulders, “ _sexy_ , sharp, witty, gorgeous,” she looks up, kisses away Charity’s tears, “I could go on. You are a thousand times better than him.”

 

Each of Vanessa’s words seems to sit on her skin, like warm, melting pools, and she waits, lets them begin to sink into her bloodstream. Calm, gentle fingers are still stroking her hair away from her face and reverence is being kissed into her neck.

 

She nods wordlessly at Vanessa’s “ok?” The blue eyes darting between the green, trying to catch every glimpse of emotion offered there. Suddenly it all feels too overwhelming and Charity tips her chin up to catch Vanessa’s lips between her own, kisses her fiercely, bruising, pours every ounce of her gratitude and _love_ into her tongue, hoping that she understands.

 

Vanessa seems to understand, rolls them over, pulls Charity on top of her, and Charity is boundlessly grateful that she knows that _this is what she needs_. 

 

Smaller hands free her of her t shirt as her own fingers move to the bottom of Vanessa’s, pulling it over her head and bringing her mouth down to adore what it reveals.

 

The warmth between them flickers into heat and Vanessa tips her head back, mouth pressed over a moan as fingertips drag slowly down her sides.

 

Nothing, nothing will ever come close to this feeling.

 

Everything apart from the pressure of Vanessa’s skin and heartbeat beneath hers fades away and, as the spine beneath her arches and she feels, _feels_ how much she is loved by this woman, she knows she could be worth this.

 

She _is_ worth this.


End file.
